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Wednesday, September 29, 2010

I am writing to you today from a secret location in my mother-in-law's barn. That's right, somebody actually married me. It is with a heavy heart that I share the horrific events that have transpired since last I blogged nearly ten days ago. In the interest of maintaining interest, I will try to be brief, sparing you of the traumatic details that will forever be etched upon the fabric of my being. Suffice it to say that I am now a fugitive of the American government and its people. If they find me, they will surely take me back to that place - that horrible, horrible place...

On September 16th of this year, as I lazily nibbled on an extra-thick shelled Klondike bar and checked the scores of my fantasy baseball playoff match-ups, I happened to notice that Google's top-searched story of the evening was America's Got Talent crowning their fifth season's winner - a dashing, young singer from Mississippi named Michael Grimm. I surfed around, did some reading about the finalists, finished my ice cream, drafted a shortstop to replace the injured Hanley Ramirez, and decided on a whim to write a comical piece claiming that Michael Grimm had made up his entire back story to pull at the heartstrings of American voters.

On the morning of September 17th, I logged onto my wife's laptop to check the stats of my blog and my replacement shortstop. Alex Gonzalez had gone three for four with a double and two RBIs, and my blog had gone for...Holy Shit! 2,200 hits? This must be mistake, I thought. Seven comments? No one comments on my blog. I've been writing about his granddaughter for over ten months and I don't think my dad even reads it. I hit refresh - 2,208. What the f--- is going on?

I spent the rest of the day watching - no, marveling - at the number of page views and editorials my fabricated story receiving. While a very small percentage of readers found the humor in my writing, the cynicism with which it was intended, their comments were far outnumbered by the onslaught of cyber-hate-mail that ensued. People were angry, indignant, threatening both litigation and karmic retribution. For a fleeting moment I felt worried and guilty, but then I decided that anyone who believed that Grimm really sang "When a Man Loves a Woman Who's House Got Flooded By a Natural Disaster and Who Doesn't Have Any Insurance at All," is too stupid to know anything about defamation lawsuits.

How wrong I turned out to be...

That evening, about 4,500 page views and 23 angry comments later, I felt compelled to write a follow-up story. I needed to clear the air and give Michael Grimm his good name back, but more importantly I needed a fall guy. Very little research later, I stumbled upon Michael Evancho, the talented opera-singing runner-up's father. Turns out, according to my complete lack of sources, Mr. Evancho was the one who had originally leaked the fake story about Michael Grimm to the press. And by press, I mean a stay-at-home daddy blogger from the boonies of northern California. And by story I mean one hundred percent fiction.

Needless to say, more page views, more hate mail, and more litigious threats ensued. I couldn't believe what I was reading. Is there no room left for comedy in this world? And what exactly did these people think I was going to get sued for? Violating our protected freedom of SPEACH claimed one reader, and if she weren't equally protected by the freedom to misspell I could totally counter-sue. By sundown that day, I was comfortably convinced that these people, with names like daradoodle, feldwoja, and raaketa, didn't have a clue what they were talking about.

That, dear readers, was the last thought that crossed my mind before my front door was kicked in. I barely had time to put my wife's laptop on stand by, turn off Sports Center, and fold up the blanket I like to use on cold, autumn nights, before I was drugged, handcuffed, and escorted to an unmarked car idling in my driveway. The last thing I saw as I drifted from consciousness were the letters R.O.N.S., but that's all I could make out.

The next few days were a blur. My first memory is being interrogated by two women named Pat and Lisa who wanted to know where the hell I got my information about Michael Grimm and why on earth I thought it was funny to satirize reality television and American culture. When I couldn't give them a satisfactory explanation, they sent me to an internment camp where they house people who dare insult the intelligence of the average American television viewers and Internet users.

The frightening reality is that these camps exist all over the country, with new ones being built all the time. It was there that I met others like myself - countless "retired" writers from The Onion, Vance Degeneres and Lewis Black from "The Daily Show," and Billy Mays who isn't dead at all, and who still clings to the hope that he will one day be pardoned when the camp's warden realizes he actually believes in Mighty Putty.

Days inside the camp were spent being reprogrammed with shock treatments, group therapy and repetitive workshops on things like literal humor. "What are you up to?" the counselors would ask us, and if we didn't say something like, "About two hundred pounds," or "Five foot seven," we were forced to watch episodes of "Mama's Family" and "My Two Dads" until we obliged. Sarcasm was greeted with caning while anything less than a truthful joke was punishable by up to a week in a padded cell wall-papered with Family Circus sketches. By week's end, I looked as defeated as the rest of them.

With every ounce of determination we could muster, we managed to craft a Billy Mays inspired escape plan. First we used the infamous Dual Saw to cut through the metal bars to our cells. Once we were in the common area we converted an AM radio into a cell phone with the Jupiter Jack and called for a taxi. Rather than navigate the labyrinth and swim across the moat to freedom, we used the Awesome Auger to chop right through the hedges before soaking up the entire moat with a dozen or so Zorbeez. Finally, once were were safely on the other side, we whipped out the Grater Plater to make some awesome quesadillas before bidding farewell and going our separate ways.

Two days later I managed to secure this secret location where I am writing to you from now. This will be the second to last time I write to you from this URL. I now know what those letters on the unmarked car stood for and I vow never to be captured again by the Middle-American Organization of Radicals Opposed to Naughty Sarcasm (M.O.R.O.N.S).

As a result I have created this new, safer blog location from which to communicate. I vow to forever continue the good fight of comedy in all forms and the American way. I vow, dear readers, to create without fear of retribution, to lie without concern for litigation, and to point fingers without giving a shit about the three pointing back at me. My motto is, "If it ain't made up, it ain't worth writing."